In a computer network employing a reliable streaming protocol for data communication, also known as guaranteed delivery streaming protocols, before one computer on the network, such as a server, can deliver content to another computer on the network, a client, a connection must first be established according to the rules of the reliable streaming protocol. Once a connection is established, the server can receive a request for content from the client and deliver a response.
The process of establishing the connection requires performing a connection handshake that involves multiple transmissions of data segments across the network to verify connection privileges before any actual content data can be transmitted. Performing this handshake requires at least a fall round trip transmission of handshake data segments across the network. Even though bandwidth between clients and servers on computer networks, including the Internet, is ever increasing, this round trip time between two machines is fundamentally bounded by the speed of light and consumes a non-trivial amount of time and resources, particularly when aggregated across a large number of connections. As a result of these resource costs, which are incurred even when a particular client is a known or trusted client, network performance can be adversely impacted.